‘The Wrestling Hipster’ is a column dedicated to a deeper, enlightened perspective on professional wrestling for people who think having an opinion about pro wrestling makes you deeper and enlightened. If you’re one of those people who reads the italicized disclaimer, the headline is unnecessarily confrontational on purpose to make people who don’t read italicized disclaimers mad. Do not take his seriously, but obey every word I type.

So here’s the problem I’m having.

Not enough people are watching and talking about NXT. It’s on WWE Network now and that helps a little, but it doesn’t get as many views as Legends House. Most wrestling fans would rather see something familiar doing nothing (i.e. Rowdy Roddy Piper trying to order takeout) than something unfamiliar doing EVERYTHING. In the first installment of The Wrestling Hipster, I’m gonna pull down my The Shield scarf and charcoal cabbie hat long enough to give you five reasons why watching NXT makes you better than other wrestling fans, and yes, I own a scarf with The Shield logo on it. And yes, I’m still going to Believe In The Shield, I don’t care what you’ve heard.

If you aren’t familiar with NXT at ALL, two things:

– It is WWE’s “developmental territory.” The minor leagues, basically. Guys are here before they’re on Raw or Smackdown usually, practicing and refining characters and seeing what works.
– Come on, man, get your shit together.

1. It lets you like the guys everybody likes before everybody likes them.

How you want to deal with that is up to you. You can go the (very cool) snotty route of, “heh, oh, you like The Wyatt Family? I was watching back when Eli Cottonwood was Bray’s follower.” You get to condescend people who think Emma’s wacky arm dance is “funny” because you know its origins … you know how Emma started as a heel and was so naturally clumsy that they had to roll with it, and her physical awkwardness turned her into an unlikely fan favorite. But yeah, go ahead and cheer for her because she has another character’s snake puppet on her arm, that’s fine.

The other way you can deal with it is … well, having somebody cool to like before it becomes consensus. Aside from snooty bragging rights or whatever you’re just getting to the good stuff first, so instead of waiting for The Shield to debut and get a big TLC match where they kill themselves, you’ve had a year of Seth Rollins as NXT Champion and Dean Ambrose as a crazy pissed-off guy trading knee strikes with William Regal. You get Roman Reigns back when his name was “Leakee.” HIS NAME WAS LEAKY. It’s not pronounced like leaky but DUDE HIS NAME WAS LEAKY AND HE BASICALLY DRESSED LIKE A HULA DANCER.

This isn’t gonna stop happening. Everything cool now is gonna come directly from this show. Sami Zayn, Tyler Breeze, Aiden English, Enzo Amore … these are all guys with something stupid great to offer and you should know about it. Or at least know enough about it to fake it in conversation.

YouTube

2. It gives you the social high ground.

On Raw, the Divas matches are usually the “bathroom break” match. I’m not throwing shade at them. Paige came up from NXT and is working hard to change the way people see women’s wrestling, but she’s still only got three minutes against Tamina Snuka or whatever and has a long way to go. They position women’s matches in a place to give people a break, like after the Undertaker loses to Brock Lesnar at WrestleMania. It’s not fair to them, really, but WWE’s conditioned crowds to be a certain way, and guess what? WWE ain’t great to women.

NXT is great to women. WWE’s still mostly hiring Hawaiian Tropic models and people they’ve jacked off to on YouTube, but those cats are being trained by Sara Del Rey, the most bulletproof North American female professional wrestler of the last 20 years. It’s making a difference, and NXT has built their shows accordingly … now instead a women’s match being a “break,” it’s a feature. It’s athletic, beautiful “Divas” beating each others’ asses and quite often stealing the show. They’re treated like competitors on a wrestling show, and not like cheerleaders and stupid girlfriends.

What does this mean for The Wrestling Hipster? It gives you the social high ground. It puts you on The Right Side Of History. When you watch Raw and your casual fan friend starts in about how the Divas match is when he’s gonna go pee, chastise him and give him the last 15 weeks of NXT as homework. “SASHA BANKS VS. BAYLEY IS 2014’S BEST PURE HEEL VS. FACE MATCH,” you can scream, PBR-spittle flying. “WOMEN ARE GOOD AT THINGS TOO, YOU JUST HAVE TO STOP BEING SO STUPID ABOUT THEM BEING IT.”

Note: it’s pretty depressing that “women are equals” is a hipster point of view, but there are at least five dudes angrily scrolling down now to call me a pussy white knight in the comments section of an already pretty pro-decent-humanity blog.

and now I’m sorta realizing that not everybody listens to podcast appearances I’m on to explain/justify references to past conversations so I’m gonna simplify that language to not seem like I’m using it in the pejorative

@Brandon I kinda have that issue somewhat regularly with whatever you write. I mean…I’m with it…I’m hip…but I don’t even get some (many) of the references you make sometimes. I feel like it would be really helpful to explain as many of your references as you can (not necessarily EXPLAIN but hyperlinking the text of the reference is super useful) as if people are reading it for the first time–because invariably there almost always are at least a few who are.

(By the way, yes, I get the irony of making an unexplained Dr. Evil reference in this comment and I’m totally taking credit for it being intentional because it totally was.)

@Chimp, someone who thinks of themselves as a male the way society sees a male. As I understand anyway. So like a non metro? Or a dude who doesnt wish he could be a woman, wear their clothes, do the things that females do.

I personally see my self as a female from the 40’s and 50’s…… stay at home and look pretty.

@wackozoa: So in other words, a “normal” male. …I’m certainly sympathetic to the plight of people who have gender identity issues and everything that that entails, but it seems a little bit unnecessary that “male who identifies as male” needs a special term. I mean, I understand that calling it “normal” would be disrespectful to the others, but… well, it is kind of the default setting. Doesn’t seem like it would need a special designation.

But that’s not a discussion for a pro wrestling blog, really.

@Thanksgiving Chimp: I didn’t know either. I wasn’t brave enough to ask, so I Googled.

Cis is short for cisgender, and yes, it means a person who identifies as the gender they are recognized by the larger society.

To your comment P-N-G: Yes, that’s exactly why there’s a term. Even if it is the more common status, it’s best not to use language to identify one person as normal and another as abnormal.

We don’t have homosexuals and “normal people”. In America, where white people are most common, we don’t have African, Asian, Hispanic, Native, and Normal Americans. We don’t have men and normals (since women are a majority by population, to give an egregious example). If any aspect of a person is described as normal, then people different from that are viewed as abnormal, and even though it shouldn’t be “abnormal” is an insult in our society. So both get terms.

I get that, and that’s why I put “normal” in quotation marks, to help make it clearer that I do understand it’s not appropriate to use “normal” or “abnormal” to describe anyone.

It just seems that creating a term for “this male does, in fact, identify as the person his outward appearance suggests” is kind of taking the long way around. He’s just “male.”

Anyway, that’s an endless discussion. I get it, it just seems like labeling for the sake of labeling. Also, I again had to Google to find out the etymology of cisgender. At first, I thought maybe CIS was an acronym. I learned all kinds of stuff tonight.

They only problem I have with the use of the term “Cis” is that it is, in the words of Monty Python, a very “tinny” sort of word that I just find kind of annoying to say. But by all means there should be a descriptive term for that. I just wish it was less tinny and more satisfyingly “woody” sounding. (huh-huh, I said “woody”)

Many many agrees. It’s getting to the point where I just watch RAW out of habit / just in case something significant happens, but I mostly just DVR and have it on in the background while I work from home on Tuesday mornings. Compared to that, NXT is a crisp, concise fresh of breath air that almost never devotes time to John Cena

Yeah, I usually watch the RAW after PPVs and then read Best/Worst all other weeks. It’s like the WWE wants you to NOT watch their show. They recap everything on Youtube and wwe.com. If you tune in late to raw they’ll recap everything important that happened so far. Watch any other show by WWE (smackdown, main event, superstars, etc.) and they’ll also recap what happened during RAW. And they’ll also have literal rematches.
Like Brandon I love wrestling but RAW is such a bloated mess.

I think the whole construct of NXT is the reason it’s so fun to watch.

The whole point of the characters in NXT is that, at their core, they all want to prove they belong in the big leagues. So the entire focus is about competition, about proving you’re better than the other guy.

So by definition, the show ends up having a more old-school sports presentation feel, where wins and losses matter.

Whereas on RAW or Smackdown, everyone’s already in the big leagues. They’re all spoiled brats who have made their money and now can focus on being “stars” and “celebrities” and stuff the way we stereotype all big-league professional athletes.

Not sure that totally made sense, but I hope you get where I’m going with that.

#6 It reduces your ability to shit on everything Triple H related. Because at the end of the day, you have no choice but to realize that he is the key component and driver behind the NXT product and its transformation into something amazing

I end up missing the show more often than not because I simply forget it on. They need to do less pushing of the Network and more talking about what day and time shows are on. Right now, from a marketing perspective, I believe they are trying too hard to push “The Network.” Treat it like its something that everyone already has and make it a mystery and advertise the day and time of your damn shows!

Agreed! Oh man, if there was just a listing rss feed or a webpage you could check or heck, get crazy with the mailing lists and give me a reminder as to when a show is going to be on that’s not filler or a replay? There are still kinks in this whole Network thing that the WWE is should figure out…

I started watching NXT right around the time they went online-only in the US, thanks to TheScore (it’s still TheScore to me, not Sportsnet360 dammit!) aired it weekly. And I fell in love with the show. With a few exceptions, I never miss the show.

When me and the wife first met 9 years ago wrestling was something that helped us bond, as I had never met a girl who liked pro graps. While her taste was questionable (her favorite at the time was Chris Masters) this was something we could relate over. Over the years she has become fatigued to wrestling and usually does something else while I watch, even more so now that I have the Network. But NXT is the one show she actually will sit and watch with me, and enjoy. I think that says something for how well put together the show is, and engaging the characters can be.

@Mister Gore The production is much better, but there was some quality OVW way back when. The Damaja vs The Machine/Doug Basham series was great and the Cappotelli-Jeter feud was awesome, too. Plus Trailer Park Trash and Flash Flanagan!

I will say that 90% of divas matches look sloppy compared to mens matches. Dont know if it’s because of the time not spent on the match or if maybe women cant do the same things as well as the men (hmmmmmm….) but there is alway something about it.

Take Paige, Ive seen the few matches shes done main roster and some of her nxt matches, even the arrival one. There is just soemthing I must be missing. She does some offense then gets pummeled then does either her paigeturner move (still looks like a weak move, not just with AJ) or does her clotheslines then has to have help getting her opponent into the scorpion lock. It just doesnt seem crisp or put together like an actual fight would be.

I kind of agree with you, Wackazoa, and tend to think Brandon oversells how good the good Diva’s matches are. With that said, there’s no doubt in my mind that the NXT diva division is more fun to watch. And if “as good as the men” is off the table (as I think it is, for now), I’d totally accept “better than what we had before.”

wackazoa is someone who obviously has never seen Sara Del Ray wrestle. Or Cheerleader Melissa. Or has ever seen even an average women’s match from Japan.

The problem for the women in the WWE is the vast majority of them simply do not have the experience in the ring to always look crisp 100% of the time. Also, you have to have a partner who knows how to dance as well to make you look really good. As good as Shawn Michaels was, a match between him and say, Sandman, would’ve never been a classic.

Another reason: Commentators who actually commentate on the matches and (usually) don’t just try to get themselves over. RAW would be at least 1,000 times more tolerable if they got rid of those fucktards currently commentating and gave their spots to Tom Phillips, Byron Saxton & William Regal.

The main roster spends most of the year (WM-RR) in the same mode as the NBA regular season, working just hard enough to be relevant when the post season comes around (RR-WM) where they really put in the effort. Raw after Mania of course being the wacky fan-service All-Star Game

NXT is full of hungry guys like the NCAA, and is in March Madness mode all year to try to stand out to the scouts.

You forgot the biggest reason. No Michael Cole / JBL / Lawler induced headache. The announcers on NXT are actually doing the job of a wrestling announcer, which is to get the talent over and call the match. They actually know the names of moves and don’t spend the entire time bickering about nonsense.

This is part of the reason NXT is the wrestling I force my non-hardcore wrestling fan friends to watch sometimes. William Regal and Albert actually improve my appreciation of what I’m seeing.

John Cena said on the Stone Cold podcast a while back that the announcers had to appeal to an international audience and commentary was supposed to reflect that fact compared to the old days, but that they were doing a “great job”. That might be the worst thing I’ve ever heard including that time when Gwyneth Paltrow tried to convince us that Ghostbusters 2 was a documentary.

That Cena defense of the announce team always bugged me. So, you mean to tell me that international audiences have a better understanding of out-of-date pop culture references and inside jokes between those 3 idiots than they would understand, oh, I don’t know, the ACTUAL NAMES OF WRESTLING MOVES? I guess it’s easier for the overseas viewers to understand JBL screaming, “This is awful! This is garbage! Get rid of this guy!” about Adam Rose, than it would be to hear them talk about what he’s actually doing in the ring.

@ themosayat John Cena was on the family friendly / no foul language of Stone Cold’s podcast episode 91. I may be combining some of what he said with what Regal has said on SCSA’s podcast as well as Colt Cabana’s podcast.

starting at 43:43
SCSA: “The announcing game has changed a lot. They don’t talk so much about what’s happening in the ring specifically or tell the story of what’s going on in the ring from a visual standpoint. That being said, Cole, JBL, Lawler do an outstanding job.
But the machine has changed. Your thoughts on that?”
Cena: “I agree. … they have to educate our audience [on the WWE app and social media] and it’s difficult to focus on the action”

Brandon, that was one of the best articles you’ve ever written. Please continue this column. Let’s continue to make cultured, intelligent, worldly wrestling fans a thing. Let’s go to shows in collared shirts!

The thing about NXT is you grow so attached to the wrestlers, not just their characters. You start caring about their careers and success on a personal level rather than the typical storyline level of “i hope Bayley gets revenge on Sasha”. When Raw-only fans say they don’t see anything special about Paige I get PISSED. When people say Emma is stupid and useless I get PISSED.

Anytime an NXT character gets called up I feel like a parent whose kid is leaving for college. You’re happy to see them succeed, but you’re also horrified that other people won’t appreciate their uniqueness and hope the real world doesn’t eat them alive.

Kinda the Minor League Baseball Effect. I’m a huge Red Sox fan, and a lot of their draftees I follow once they’re signed. You grow more attached to these guys as you follow them throughout the course of their career.

@DoctorCAW I hear you about that. I went to Cardinals Spring training this year, and now all of the minor leaguers I watched are like my children. I get so excited when I see Xavier Scruggs in Triple A or whatever.

I just like style of wrestling. the pacing of it all seems and stays hyped. its why I liked punk, bryan, cesaro, and the shield. they don’t seem to have the traditional wwe style. I like zayn and I hope they have a place for him. like in the shield. as el generico. in a black flak jacket and mask.

well my head cannon was after getting their asses handed to them a few times a ‘strange and mysterious’ masked attacker would come in and help fight off evolution. appearing at random to fuck shit up and leave before revealing himself to be zayn (who after consistently not being good enough got cut thus setting up his grudge with HHH) this would give zayn the shield and evolution something to do that would showcase all their talent

@indieguy HHH and Sami are best buddies! Trips had words of respect and hugs for him after his match vs Cesaro at Arrival.

But yeah, they don’t really need Sami if they want to fulfill Seth’s role in The Shield, they can just use Crowe who can have a backstory with Ambrose, considering they really have one from before WWE.

Re: number 5– I reread that entry several times to try to figure out how the “Punk fans don’t have reasons for liking him, they’re just sheep” point fits into the larger point. I couldn’t do it. I’m dumb, I guess.

…But hey, it wouldn’t truly be a “hipster blog” if someone didn’t say “you’re not cool, because you like this popular thing.”

Man, I get who brandon is talking about, and I don’t mean brandon in particular when I say what I’m going to say, but I just hope people would stop generalize when shaming punk and/or his fans because of what some of the stupid sheep crowd’s do to entertain themselves sometimes. (The guy at TSS, I’m looking your way. (But I still enjoy your retro wrestling reviews.))

NXT is ran by HHH, Dusty Rhodes, Sara Del Ray, and William Regal just showing up for lulz and doing amazing commentary. They don’t have to worry about “creative”, don’t have to worry about earning reports and tv ratings, they just go out there and have fun. And the product becomes infectious.

And how could you now put him as one of the reasons you should watch NXT? His commentary is pure gold.

recently, when my best friend was over to watch last week’s smackdown/marvel over the newborn, i suggested we watch an episode of NXT that she would probably be interested in (besides, the uso/wyatt match at last week’s SD = not what we wanted to watch.) so i fired up the episode of sami zayn’s debut AND his first run-in with (antonio!) cesaro. she was not disappointed! (she wanted to watch that match, but couldn’t find it anywhere else.)

she also got her first taste of enzo amore. and it was fantastic. just wait until i show her leo kruger and she’s going to be hopping on the kruger train rather than the exotic express. (i still miss my homeboy kruger. he was the best south african headhunter i ever knew. *tear*)

seriously though, more people should watch NXT and the older episodes are great! i still watch them from time to time. (i really do wish that hulu had more of the first NXT-at-full-sail episodes rather than jumping in mid september 2012. i would have liked to seen the first tournament for the NXT title and more of seth rollins as champ. that would have been awesome.)

My absolute hardest laugh watching NXT came from one of the phantom early episodes. Seth Rollins had just become NXT Champion and had “The Majarajah” Jinder Mahal, who he beat to become Champ, demand a rematch. Very tense in-ring confrontation. The next week they have the match, recorded during a new set of tapings, the set of which happened after Jinder Mahal started 3MB. So the video package shows a tough angry fighter while walking down to ring is a dude in leather pants playing air guitar to his cheesy rock theme. I don’t remember the match, but I still laugh hard at that.

I went to my first NXT TV taping last week and it was a blast. Over 3 and a half hours of NXT wrestling for 10 bucks. Full Sail is kinda located in the traffic butt of Orlando but I can see myself going every month now. NXT is hitting all gears and it’s now the only show I’m watching regularly.

And holy balls, guys, wait till you see the tag team that shows up 2 eps from now. Possibly the greatest characters they’ve written up in a long time.

I know, right?! it pretty much made me believe that wrestling on a weekly basis being able to be good to great, enjoyable and not too tiring. and since then, I haven’t been so excited nor felt very obligated to continue watching other sh*t on the regular.

also, god, I’m so intrigued by how much you’ve hyped this tag team’s characters! I hope they deliver.

So me and this article are Best Friends now.
Nattie’s recent women’s title match with Charlotte (who is much better than Paige so far from what I’ve seen) pretty much won me over with NXT. But my favorite point is that last one. It seems like people don’t “get” Triple H. Or all the good things he’s pulled off since he started running things. INCLUDING OFFERING US THE WWE NETWORK AT ALL, CONSIDERING THE FINANCIAL RISK IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE. He’s developing new talent. They have a center. In case you haven’t noticed, TV ain’t as “PG” as it had been. Its getting edgy again. Is it all gold? No. But it’s better than it was as little as 2 years ago.

It would be useful for my efedding friends to watch NXT. It’s frustrating when I try to explain my new character’s gimmick as ‘FEMALE ENZO AMORE’ or ‘KINDA LIKE BO DALLAS’ and people give me blank stares.

(Of course, they know who Bo is NOW…)

(Also I can’t believe I just publicly admitted to efedding WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME DO I WANT TO BE SINGLE FOREVER???)

She’s a literal hooker. Her name is a play on words with ‘Jersey Shore’ – she’s the ‘Jersey Whore’. I have her run her mouth a little bit along with her friend (who’s a Miley Cyrus parody named Molly Cyrus) and then they both get hilariously squashed by someone better. (I write the shows, so I can decide how the match goes, lol.)

5 just explains your ethos perfectly. Why honestly respond to things that are happening on screen, when instead you can just be concerned with being “counter.” And it’s fucking laughable for Stroud to throw shade at people for being “hivemind” when any opinion that’s not officially cosigned by him gets shouted down in this forum for being “trolling.”

I think you missed the point of the column. It’s Brandon being self-deprecating about being a wrestling hipster. And I don’t think that this:

Observe, understand, and try hard. Go the extra mile to watch a show and discover characters you don’t already love. Learn to love new things. Try the new

as an ethos is as much of an insult as you think it is.

That said, I think the hating on Punk that Brandon (and others) have done is a little confusing. CM Punk is (was?) my favorite wrestler: i was a fan of him both in the ring and on the mic and I think him being on WWE television makes it better. But he had fulfilled all of his dates and was going to take a hiatus when his contract was over in July. He had done everything he could possibly do in the WWE… except main event Wrestlemania. It was clear he wasn’t going to main event Wrestlemania so instead of going through the motions and half-ass it (and I’m about as big as CM Punk mark as there is: he had been half-assing it and going through the motions largely since Summerslam) he quit. Again, fulfilled all of his dates.

He was in a no-win situation because he was going to be raked over the coals if he stayed in a situation he was unhappy in. On top of all that, we got Daniel Bryan’s amazing Wrestlemania 30 out of it. So everyone ended up happy.

I don’t have anything against the point made in the section you quoted. If you love wrestling, then you should absolutely watch NXT because there’s interesting things being done and a lot of it is allowed to be weird/interesting/in depth in a lot of ways they don’t let Raw being. The jabs about people liking Main Event faces I find frustrating. Brandon seems a lot of times to just slag on faces for reasons that to me are specious.
Let’s bring up as just an example his criticism of how Daniel Bryan has acted in not giving up his belt. In real life he can’t wrestle because he incidentally injured his neck and therefore it makes sense for him to give up the belt. In the storyline his neck injury was caused by Kane tombstoning him three times a few weeks ago on Raw. That means that his employers who have tried every underhanded trick they could to keep him from getting his championship essentially sent a thug after him to knock him out of action because he couldn’t beat him in a match. If he simply surrendered his title to these people it would essentially say to the audience, “It doesn’t matter how awful people are to you, if they’re your bosses you must submit to their will.” In that case it seems to me that an act of defiance, and in this case a bit of civil disobedience is fine. He’s not threatening them with a gun like Austin, or shitting in their car like Sheamus, he’s simply refusing to hand the title over to them.
His response to that time of criticism is to just call people who defend faces like Punk and Bryan sheep, that’s annoying and not very productive. I understand the resistance to people who just defend everything the WWE does, they’re clearly not engaged in any active thinking. But instead your position is “Anything a face does is wrong always,” to me that’s as silly and unthinking as “Anything they do is fine.” There are a lot of problems that the WWE has with writing their faces, but that doesn’t mean everything they do with them is wrong.